Cruise Ship Terminal in doubt

Jun 23, 2013

Well it's been well known for years and we've been warning the people of the Gold Coast for years - this whole saga has ALWAYS been about private developers relieving the people of their public land at The Spit and Wavebreak, to build private hotels, casinos and super yacht facilities there. The cruise ship terminal idea is and has always been just a ploy to facilitate this and deceive the public into believing that there will be associated benefit to the community should the proposed project proceed. For weeks now there has been speculation that the State Government is well aware of the economic failure a cruise terminal would likely be if it were to go ahead, although when quizzed on this only a few days ago Mayor Tom Tate remained defiant saying "They haven't said anything else but positive to me, so I'll be guided by that". How long can he cling to this statement? Not very long it seems. Today it was announced that the cruise terminal may actually not be supported by the state government any more, but that the proposed Broadwater project might still go ahead without a terminal? Wait a second, no terminal, no proposed benefit from visiting passengers for the city, but the private consortia still take the public park lands for themselves? At first glance it might look like a 'win' but apparently it is far from it. Read here

Previously, the only defence the State Government, in particular dept Premier Jeff Seeney and Premier Campbell Newman, have ever offered when pressed about why they would support development of The Spit and Wavebreak has been a flimsy fall-back onto the questionable notion that the Mayor went to the last election campaigning openly for a cruise ship terminal (which we know wasn't the case). For them, the entire concept was built around the ideal that a cruise ship terminal would bring benefits to the community (which we know it wouldn't) and that any 'public private partnership' or PPP was hinged on this being the case.

"We have a Mayor down at the Gold Coast, Mayor Tom Tate, who as I clearly recall, campaigned saying prior to the election, saying he wanted to build a Gold Coast cruise terminal and I said at the time as the newly elected Premier, that if he was elected, we'd back him. Now the people who are spearheading this are the Gold Coast City Council, what my government is doing is backing up a Mayor who had the guts to go to the electorate saying this is what he wanted to do, and we will back him." - Premier Campbell Newman November 21st 2012

There's two glaring problems with the Premiers statement above and the state government support up until this point - firstly that Cr Tate did not go to his electorate and campaign for any commercial development, or PPP at The Spit or Wavebreak Island, and in fact campaigned under the premise that it would be off limits to this kind of thing and secondly, if the state government support is for a cruise ship terminal, how on earth does it have anything to do with private casinos and hotels?

Last year the Premier seemed to back this up when questioned about the development of Wavebreak Island or The Spit in saying - "This state of Queensland, today, in the year 2012, is not a place where you come up and you say 'hey, I like that bit of public land, I'm a good bloke, give it to me' or 'hi, I want to build a casino, give me a license'. We don't do business that way," - Campbell Newman 24th September 2012

Yet two days ago he announced via the ABC the following polarised statement - "Ladies and gentlemen, we expect to see land unlocked, that will offer opportunities for private sector investment and community benefit ... so think about what I've just said. There might be a block of land there that we don't know about that the private sector could come forward and propose some sort of project on." - Campbell Newman June 19th 2013

Well allow us to retort. Ladies and gentlemen, this is absolutely unacceptable for the residents and voters of this city.

Gold Coasters NEVER voted to give away our land to private developers or to further private enterprise profits

ALL surveys current and previous indicate that between 75% and 90% of people want to keep The Spit and Wavebreak undeveloped

There was no campaign prior to any election that had mention of any of this

This is public land, state land, it belongs to the people of Queensland, not to private enterprise and certainly not to the Gold Coast City Council

If there's no cruise terminal, then there's no perceived PPP benefit to our city so it should be scrapped immediately

We will have more on this as it develops, but please be vigilant and wary of what is happening - it's a land grab plain and simple, no matter how they disguise it or describe it.